Our Final P3/Right to Die/Breeding for Truth/3 Cartoons/

This will be the final edition of Ed Coletti's P3.  It feels to me as though ten years or close to that is about enough and that this blog has run its course.  We live in an age of instant communication.  Facebook actually may do a better job of getting out the word.  I realize that the P3 and its archives live much longer than do  social media postings.  However, the popularity of blogging may be declining exponentially.  BUT, I will not give up blogging entirely! No Money In Poetry will continue to live!  NMIP serves a somewhat different function for a more specialized readership.  People who enjoy literature and writing, painting, sculpture, drama, and cinema should remain interested in reading it.  I will be able to get out NMIP more frequently, perhaps monthly or bimonthly.  If you already are receiving emails announcing NMIP editions, you'll continue to receive them.  If you are not being notified and wish to be, simply drop me an email at edcoletti(at)sbcglobal(dot)net.  Of course substitute an ampersand (@) for the "at" and a period (.) for the "dot."

 

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(P1) Philosophical

This wonderful letter appeared in the Jan. 28th issue of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat and pretty much says it all for me. (This issue of People appeared prior to Brittany Maynard's brave move to die in Oregon.

Right to die

 

EDITOR: If you are reading this, you are going to die. Evidence for eternal life relies on faith. My solution to this truth is living. I live today to its fullest because this is the only life I know. 

Our wise, enlightened forefathers bequeathed us inalienable rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I submit that this includes the right to die. So many believe that we don’t have this right. We have no national religion nor church, only the constitutional right to practice our beliefs — or unbelief.

For those who warn of the slippery slope of mass suicides or mandatory euthanasia, I disagree. We mammals have an innate sense of survival. We humans persevere under the most horrific conditions. I want to live. I daresay that you do, too. But when we reach a point of insurmountable pain despite the best palliative care, or unremitting inconsolable depression, or have reached a state in our life that we know we are finished, why can’t we choose our demise without having to break the law or put loved ones who want to help us at risk?

Dear reader, I wish you a peaceful death surrounded by your loved ones. Let me go in peace, too.

CHRIS SORK

Santa Rosa

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(P2) Poetical

Breeding For Truth

by Ed Coletti

When as in a science fiction movie

or in a Wallace Stevens poem

hell, that all-defining inferno,  could

be extinguished and children might be

more apt to recognize their parents

as the frauds we all become when we sire

posing as thoroughbreds while, no more

than the nags the word “parenthood” demands,

we preen, prance and perform our dressage

(though only great money can bring this off)

poorly, transparently, and our words,

our advice to them, rumbles from

within an empty hogshead of sour sherry,

useless, undrunk, without any utility at all

except the confidence that children also

become parents and fail in each

particular the same way an odds-on

favorite stumbles, falls, and is shot.

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(P2) Political

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